Short || I’m committing to 20 minutes of running every other day starting today no excuses. Proven myself by running in the rain. No more Blerch

Intro Rambling

Over the course of the last year I’ve finally worked things out a working system to affect my health in a positive way, more on that later. The MAX of the graph above is 223# and the MIN is 195#. I like to round and think in my head I’ve dropped about 30 pounds. I’m motivated by numbers and being able to see results in them. Fitness gadgets feed my love of numbers. I’ve had a Fitbit for 4+ years, an Aria scale for a few years, Microsoft Band for a year, and this week a Lumo lift.

More on numbers and what I track later. Today I ran in the rain, and I’m feeling pretty good about that. Randomly over the last year a run here or there has happened with no consistency. In the last week the commitment has been elevated and solidified. Current commitment, made up while writing, is to run every other day for a 20 minutes or more. Today no excuses were allowed and I ran in the pouring rain. The trails around work are wooded which protected me from some of the rain, so it was not horrible; Not awesome, but not horrible.

Finding time

The hardest part of starting and staying committed to running for me has been finding the time without taking away from the family. I work swing shift (1300-2300) four nights a week. Work nights I make it to sleep between 0100 and 0200. Michelle lets me sleep in until about 7:30 in the morning unless the kids wake me up around 5:30. Kids go to school by 9 a few days a week, and I leave for work around 11. Works days my time in the morning is dedicated to the wife and kids as much as possible. Family comes before me in my priority tree. Taking an hour out to get ready, run, then calm down is huge expense to me that’s not easy to justify.

Michelle is very supportive and says do it, but that’s from someone old enough to understand. From the house to the end of the road is about ½ a mile then we hit some big hills. At work we have about 6 miles of well cared for gravel trails. At home Dragon the dog loves to run with me, at work I’m not taking time away from the kids in my head. Generally, I arrive 20-40 minutes before my shift officially starts. The Variation depending on traffic. If you’re not early you’re late, and 60 miles of traffic allows for unlimited variation in arrival time. To satisfy my obsession with being early to on time there’s 40 minutes of buffer in my commute.

My compromise is to leave for work about 15 minutes early. Fifteen minutes being about five minutes longer then I spend getting ready and showering, so the cost from family is low. Those 15 minutes and my buffer should provide about 40-60 minutes to Run and shower at work before the start of shift. Worst case my schedule does allocate an hour for lunch I will use to run to make the commitment. On the days off I’ll find time to run where I don’t impact the kids and can exercise the dog, plus continue to take walks with the kids.

Future planning

In three months the leave for work time might need to be bumped up as my fitness level increases and the running commitment increases to 30-40-50 minutes. Next week I hope to have a better established gym bag to better take care of me. Friday was going to be a running day but my shoes did not make it into the car. Today my tops were drenched and I was missing a wet bag. I’ll get there, much like dropping pounds, it’s a process to improve with more experience.

Pictures – Always Pictures

As always some pictures – Maybe a video later. I filmed a bunch of today’s run but it needs editing before it can be posted. In the video I did notice some odd arm drops on my drives side I’ll need to improve on; videos are great.

Not excited at all getting ready, but I made a commitment

After the first mile – feeling good and the rain was not as annoying as I figured it would be. Dam my hands were cold

All done heading back into the B36 parkaide for a shower

Took a picture of the retention pond to prove raining hard. See – ripples in the water.